I remember when trusting was so easy for me. It was a time when I gave easily of the love in my heart, the dreams in my mind, the humor on my tongue. That is until the first time someone else decided my “me” was not good enough. Suddenly, there was hesitation where there had been none, before I would smile, laugh, hug, and love. With the new information, I cowered and watched every step. Sometimes I feared the disapproval so much that I wished I would not live another moment. I was a child and not wishing for death, but I was searching for peace or a resting place.

On some cool October nights with the leaves falling all around, I would breathe deeply and listen to the far off sound of thunder. I am that sound and that thunder. I feel it coursing within me. I feel myself moving and rolling in with the storm. I am the low, boom, earthshaking, sky-splitting me. Some are afraid. Don’t they hear what I am saying? Don’t they recognize pure, uninterrupted, uncompromising laughter?

My sharp wit slices through the sky like the tongue of a serpent. I bat my eyelashes and light up the indigo sky. My flirtation should not be feared nor misunderstood. It should be reveled in as I reveal myself to you. “Look at me!” But they don’t see. They pull the shades and huddle in corners away from my light. My tears pour out as rain upon the earth as I realize they cannot look at what they cannot see.

“I ain’t seen no rainbows round here.” Sitting on the worn out brick steps in front of our dingy gray apartment building, I squint hard trying to remember. Nope. I know I’ve never seen a real one. “There was a couple in the oil stain left by Mr. Johnson’s hunk-a-junk car, but I ain’t never seen one up in the sky with all them colors like they got on T.V.”

“You think they real, Angel?” I look over to see my baby sister Theresa looking up at the sky. Her skin is the color of the good kind of peanut butter and just as smooth. We look like chocolate and peanut butter waiting to melt in the sunshine sitting side by side on the stoop. She keeps blinking her eyes cause the Sun is in them. I don’t know how it can get past those eyelashes though. They look like the ones I seen on a camel when my class took a field trip to the Bronx Zoo.

She is a lot prettier than me cause she got light skin, funny-colored Hazel eyes and long, wavy, jet black hair, but we both look just like our Momma bout the face. We got the same daddy cause Momma says she loves a man who speaks Spanish, even if he is no good. When I get my hair straightened with the hot comb, Momma tells me she wishes we all got that good hair of his. She says he was even too sorry to do that for us, specially since she think he never did plan to stick around.

He must of stayed for awhile though, cause I’m going on eleven, my big sister Tasha is fifteen and Theresa is almost ten. She says Theresa got his good hair and I got his quick tongue. She tells me a “quick tongue” ain’t a bad thing. Says I just have a way of talking to people to make it seem like they the only person in the world and that I have a sponsibilty not to try and trick people with my words. I’m not real sure what “sponsibilty” is, but a word that long must mean a lot. That’s why I try to look put for my little sister. I know she looks up to me. Part of my sponsibility.

“Course they real,” I roll my eyes at her to let her know she’s being stupid. “Else they wouldn’t put it on T.V.”

“The Smurfs on T.V. but they ain’t real.”

“That’s different. Everybody knows cartoons is fake. You can’t be jumping off no building and get up. Rainbows are different,” I explain. “They are real. I seen pictures in my science book at school. When I’m grown I’m gonna move away from this ole place. Ain’t even got no grass and them sorry sticks with those short metal fences around them like skirts can’t be what trees supposed to look like.

“Yup. Gonna get a big house out in the country somewhere. Maybe Long Island. And I’m gonna have them paint my house this color,” I pull the banana yellow Now and Later from my mouth and show her. “Me and my husband gonna have a buncha chocolate babies, some dogs and a whole lotta money. And every morning when he leaves to go to the hospital, cause he gonna be a doctor, I’ll kiss him goodbye at the front door. He’ll pull out the driveway in the dopest navy blue Beamer you ever seen, and it’ll be a big old rainbow hanging up there in the sky, just like a ribbon on a Christmas present. You wait and see.” I narrow my eyes at Tashawn Williams and his crew chilling against his car waiting for trouble. “And ain’t gonna be no sorry knuckleheads drinking them forties and slanging on my street.”

“Who gonna marry you with your nappy head?” I turn to see my big sister Tasha standing right behind the two of us on the porch stairs. She and Angel got the same peanut butter complexion, she got her hair from Momma too. When she use to get her hair wet Momma use to almost beat her to make her sit still while she combed through all them little peeze that curled up all over her head. Now that she is fifteen, Momma lets her get a perm to straighten it. Standing there behind us, her hair looks like it’s alive and wiggling with all those braids she just had done. I like how they look but they got to be too tight if they make your eyes slanted like that.

The purple, white, and gold Nike running suit and matching sneakers she has on are flavor. Must be new and I know Momma ain’t give Tasha no hundred dollars for no sneakers. As I look her up and down, I don’t bother to tell her that I like it. Don’t want her to get a big head.

“Shut up! I’m gonna have a house and all that. You ain’t gonna be coming to my house either. You gonna be like that bag lady Ole Miss Ella running round here with your shopping cart talking bout ‘The world gonna end, Chile. The world gonna end,’ You gonna be funky and all your teeth rotten out. Gonna come to my pretty house, spreading all that funk and I’m gonna sick my dogs on you.”

She does what she always does when I’m right, she pulls my hair. Bumping me with her big hips, she sort of hops down the stairs and gets into the Tashawn’s car. Momma don’t like him and I don’t either. He looks like trouble walking around on two legs. How did he get that BMW or those shiny rims? How is he always buying Tasha clothes that Momma says are too grown? He brought her the Nikes and the running suit. Another reason not to say I like them. He’s the type of thug that won’t be allowed in my neighborhood when I grow up.

When I know Tasha can’t hear I say, “And I should tell Momma you with that no good boy again. Momma told you bout being with him.” Theresa starts laughing like crazy cause she know I only talk junk when Tasha can’t hear. Tasha may be fifteen and kind of short, but she’s built like a grown woman and fight like a one too.

Seems like everyday she comes home from school or some party with a story about some girl she fought. I ain’t impressed by all that fighting and stuff, but whenever the older boys that walk home with us pick on me, she sends them home, clothes all tore up, noses running, crying like they tried to make me cry. It’s funny, even now, just thinking about it.

“If you look real hard you see colors like the rainbow all over the place. That car over there is green like grass and the fire hydrant is red as a apple. The new dress that Momma got from that white lady Ms. Lewis for church is purple and the Sun is yellow.”

Theresa just don’t quit. She is pointing to all the different colors she see like she on the Safari Train at the zoo. When you get that girl on something she stays right up on it til she’s got the answer.

I see the 7:30 bus while she’s breaking her neck calling out colors. That’s Momma’s bus. She’s always tired from working, but today she looks worse. She gets up every morning at four just to make the five o’clock bus to make her train on time.

I can tell by the way she slowly gets down off the bus that her feet are hurting her real bad. With her dark gray dress and her black smock blowing in the breeze behind her, she looks like a worn out Wonder Woman. Her skin is chocolate like mine, but always looks a little ashey, even after she puts baby oil on it. When we run to meet her at the corner, she smells like working too hard.

“How was your day Momma?” As I ask, Theresa leans up to meet Momma’s cheek with a kiss. I almost laugh out loud at the way she sticks out her lips like a fish to kiss Momma’s face. “Who wanna kiss something like that after a long day?” I wonder. Momma must hear what I’m thinking cause she smiles and sort fo laughs as she kisses Theresa.

I put my arm around her waist hoping she’ll lean on me a little so her tired feet will have some help. She doesn’t though. Instead she tucks me in close to her and almost carries me along like I ain’t heavy at all. Like she don’t know I’m almost eleven. We are on our way up the stairs in front of our building before Momma answers me.

“Whew! Work was rough today. The building was too hot as usual and when the fan broke my boss wouldn’t even send us home early. It got so hot in there I swore I saw the Devil himself looking for a cool spot in the shade.”

“Ma, you being silly. You know you can’t see the Devil unless you go to h… I mean the place where bad people go.”

Saying bad words is one thing that will set Momma off. One time I got a beating for cussing at my teacher Miss Maranda. She had it coming, always picking on me cause sometimes I daydream. Gonna yell me in front of everybody in class.

That woman called and asked Momma to come down to the school. Momma took a day off work, came to the school and made me apologize to the lady. Then Momma said, “Maybe if you kept Angel’s mind occupied she would not drift off into into another world.”

I left the office smiling because she told that lady about her teaching skills. We get all the way to the bus stop and Momma looks down at me and said, “When we get home, I’m gonna wear you out! I don’t send you to that school because you already know everything! You’re there to learn! You’re not one of these street rats who learns to cuss before they can say they ABCs.”

Momma lets out a deep breathe through her mouth. “I don’t think hell can be much different then this, so be a good girl so you can go to heaven.”

“Momma,” Theresa starts, “you think they got rainbows in heaven?”

“Rainbows? Where did that question come from?”

“Me and Angel was talking,”

“Angel and I were talking,” Momma corrects her.

“Angel and I were talking about seeing rainbows before you got off the bus,” Theresa explains. “If God’s got rainbows up there in heaven, how come He don’t send them down to us?”

“Of course God has rainbows. If you are smart enough to ask that question you are too smart to say, ‘how come He don’t send’ instead of ‘Why doesn’t he send’.

“God is very busy running this whole world, keeping the planets circling around the Sun. If He sent a rainbow down everyday we would get so use to them we would forget they are a miracle. He gives us sunrise and sunset, but do we notice?”

Momma lets out another breathe from her mouth and starts again. “The Lord is trying to clean up all the Devil’s foolishness. God has a million angels that help by letting Him know what’s going on. They fly in from all of the world to tell Him who’s trying real hard, who’s having tough times, who’s being kind and unselfish. They even tell Him who is going astray and who’s hurting real bad deep down inside.

“They also tell the Lord of all the wickedness and how some people’s hearts forget He is still in charge. Then He tells a special group of angels who are in charge of sending the blessings down special delivery that way everyone gets what they need to keep running this race.”

“Like a business?”

“Yes, baby,” Momma’s eyes light up and give love to me and Theresa. “Like a business.”

“Like the one you work for Momma?”asks Theresa.

“Oh no, sweetie. This business is so much better. The work is so easy the angels would say it isn’t work at all. It’s never too hot or too cold and the pay is eternal life. Your back doesn’t get sore. And your hands don’t ache so bad you cry when you twist the doorknob to get in the house.” She tries to open and close her hands to show us but she can’t ball up her fist all the way.

Sometimes I forget momma is still young. At least she says she is. Momma’s thirty-two years old don’t look nothing like those ladies on T.V. selling that Oil of Olay. Tiny little lines stretch out under and around Momma’s eyes, going in all directions like rays from the sun. Same thing around her mouth and all across her forehead.

She’s still pretty though. Specially on Sunday mornings when she puts on her best dress and does her hair up all nice. I still don’t know how she can walk in the high heel shoes she puts on. When we’re walking the five blocks to our church, she seems to almost dance down the street. The tail of her dress just flipping back and forth like it’s just as happy to be going to church as Momma is. The sound of those heels clicking against the sidewalk and the sight of that dress dancing down the street makes Momma look like a party.

“In one section of heaven there are angels whose only job is making things to help make this Earth pretty,” Momma tells us. “They are up there make skies so blue it looks like you can swim in them. In another place, they make snowflakes one by one so everyone is different. And there’s another section, right next to God’s throne, where they make rainbows. If someone you know goes to heaven and they’re thinking about you they send one down to you.”

“You mean somebody I know gotta die before I can get a rainbow?” I shake my head. “If that’s the case, I don’t need no rainbows. How come I gotta lose somebody before I can get one? It ain’t fair.” I shake my head again. “Them people on T.V. have more rainbows then they know what to do with. They don’t have to wait for nobody to die.”

Momma laughs and says I watch too much T.V. I’m still mad about having to lose someone who loves me to get a rainbow as we make our way up the last flight of stairs. We pass the elevator that never works and come up on the door to our apartment. Even though most of the lights in the hall don’t work, the window at the end of the hall with the metal bars lets in enough light for Momma to see how to put the key in the door.

Inside, Momma pulls off her shoes and lines them up against the wall. She did it so quickly you woulda thought they were on fire. We take off our shoes too. Momma says her Momma taught her you’re not supposed to drag dirt from out in the street all over a place where your home. She says that’s why some people can’t get their minds off work. “Still standing at the bus stop in their very own home.”

By the time Momma gets down the short hall to her tiny bedroom at the back of the apartment, most of her dress and smock are off and folded over her arm.

“You all get yourselves something to eat. Momma’s dead tired tonight. Has Tasha been home to see about you two?”

When I walk to the doorway of her bedroom to make an excuse for Tasha, Momma is strecthed out across the bed in her slip, sound asleep. I pull the door closed really slow even though it’s broken and don’t close all the way. Theresa and I sit in the living room in front of the T.V. We eat leftover fried chicken, potato salad, and string beans from yesterday’s Sunday dinner. I’m looking down at the blue daisies on the chipped plate I’m eating off of and decide the shutters and door on my yellow house will be this color blue.

It is about nine o’clock when we hear loud music outside. Can’t be nobody but Tasha and Tashawn. Peeking out the window, I see the shine of his car underneath the streetlights. Since the lights in the street are on I know I shouldn’t go out, but if that music wakes up Momma, Tasha is gonna get it. She may be a pain sometimes, but I watch her back and she watches mine.

“Stay here,” I whisper to Theresa. “I’m gonna go down there and tell them to turn that music down.”

I creep out the front door, then sit down in the hall and lace up my sneakers. After about two flights of twisting and turning to get downstairs, I hear the door open and close behind me. The footsteps I hear are running. It has to be Theresa cause Momma don’t run. There is no time to turn around and send her back, so I run faster so we can both be back upstairs and in front of the T.V. before Momma wakes up. By the time I get outside to the stoop, Tasha is already getting out of the car.

“Tell him to turn that music down before he wakes Momma up,” I yell in a whisper. Why she wanna hang around with him for anyway? Don’t even have sense enough to know how to sneak right. I’m standing there with my hand on my hip, rolling my eyes so hard I don’t notice this dude walking up on Tashawn’s car until is pushing his face in the car window on Tashawn’s side. I ain’t trying to be in nobody’s business but I can’t help but overhear what they are saying.

“Tashawn, man, you got my money?” asked someone underneath a sky blue baseball cap with a white “NY” stitched on it. Under the streetlights it looks like lightning in a clear sky. “You shoulda been slung that rock I put on you. Up the loot, Nigga!”

“Don’t be trying to punk me in front of my girl.” Tashawn’s voice sounds kind of shaky, not like the voice he uses when he’s arguing with Tasha. “I’ll check you about it in a minute.”

“NAWH, NIGGA! NAWH! YOU GON CHECK ME RIGHT MOTHERFUCKING NOW! I DON’T CARE IF THIS IS YOUR BITCH OR YOUR GODDAMN MOMMA! UP MY SHIT RIGHT NOW! YOU TRYING TO FRONT FOR THIS HOE!?! BITCH ASS NIGGAS ALWAYS TRYING TO BEAT ME OUT MY MONEY! YOU GON CHECK ME RIGHT NOW!”

He’s swinging his arms all around and twisting his head like his ready to snatch Tashawn outta the car right through the window.

“Bitch!?! Hoe!?! Who you talking to!?!” Tasha is yelling at the hat like she may be ready to fight him if even if Tashawn isn’t.

The baseball cap turns towards Tasha and points at her so hard it hurts my feelings. “IF THIS PUNK-ASS NIGGA WASN’T SO BUSY TRYING TO RUN UP IN YOU, HE COULD GET OUT THERE AND GET THAT MONEY! OR MAYBE HE’S BUYING THAT ASS WITH MY DOUGH!?!” The way he looks at her, from toe to head, he seems to have recognized the cost of her clothes.

“Yo man, don’t talk to her like that,” Tashawn says from inside the car.

“I’LL TALK TO ANYBODY ANYWAY I FUCKING FEEL LIKE TIL I GET MY MONEY,” he tells Tashawn. He focuses back on Tashawn inside the car. “NAWH! MATTER FACT, YOU RIGHT! NO MORE TALKIN!”

In a flash he pulls the biggest gun I’ve ever seen out of his waistband so quick it looks like a magic trick.

I don’t run even though I am scared to death. I want to, but I can’t move. I feel someone pulling at my legs and look down to see Theresa trying to get me to come down there with her. Tasha is flat on the ground like a G.I. Joe soldier and she’s crawling on her belly to get up to where we are. She’s screaming, but the words are all weird and I can’t figure out what she’ trying to say. I’m begging my legs to drop but they won’t listen to me.

I hear thunder like it’s inside my head and see white flashes coming from the end of gun. “Please God,” I pray. “Make my legs listen!”

I must be crying cause I feel water on my cheeks and taste snot on my lip. One. Two. Three. The flashes leave the gun sounding like M-80s. Right into the car and right into Tashawn. He hunches over the steering wheel with his face pressing the horn so hard it sounds like he’s calling for help.

Blue cap looks up at me and smiles with his lips all curled up like he’s proud of what he just did. He is looking me dead in the eye and I can read his lips before the sound gets to my ears. “No witnesses, no crime,” his lips tell me as he raises the gun and aims it at me.

“GET A AMBULANCE! MOMMA! MOMMA! CALL THE COPS,” she screams! She’s crying and trying to stop the cherry red circles on my shirt. She can’t stop them. They get bigger and bigger until they run right into one another. Tasha pulls me into her lap.

“THERESA, GO GET MOMMY NOW! GET HER RIGHT NOW!” Theresa is crying and screaming. She’s on the porch, backed up into the corner we use for base when we play hide-and-go-seek. Tasha tells me Momma will be here and I’ll be alright. She tells me to stay awake until Momma comes and I’m trying to get my eyes to stay open, but they don’t listen any better than my legs do.

“Oh God, No! Please! Please, don’t take my baby, God! Please!” I can see Momma as she burst through the door. Still in her slip, she takes me from Tasha’s arms and I finally hear the first sirens. I tell myself to keep my eyes open until help gets to me, but now Momma’s rocking me. I’m so sleepy now. And cold.

Mama’s telling me what a good girl I am, how proud she is of me. Begging me not to die. Telling me I am her baby. She says we are the only reason she didn’t quit living a long time ago. I try to tell her I’m okay, tell her I love her. I’m just a little bit sleepy.

When I woke up, I was here. Momma was right. Right next to the throne room, making rainbows to send down for her cause I know she’s missing me bad right now.

Asking for help, I even doubt me.
No one has come to see about me.
Must be the island I’m out here on.
Nothing can grow here. Ground just like stone.
Lord, are You there? Could this be my test?
How can I pass it when I need to rest?

I just want to lay down.

Twenty years old, but all mixed up.
Tired of drinking from a sour cup.
World stop turning! Just let me sit down.
Trying to grasp what’s going down.
What about recess, or a snow day?
Trying to lead. . .don’t know the way.

I just want to lay down.

Folks smile at me, then hurt my heart.
When did evil get renamed “smart”?
Calling me sister but also a whore.
Saying they friends, but then they keep score.
Calling me fool thinking I don’t know.
Ones close to you slipping in your back do’.

I just want to lay down.

American Dream got me on hold.
Paycheck to paycheck I sell my soul.
Miss just one day and don’t eat at all.
Rent a little late? Your stuff’s in the hall.
A mighty wind blows both south and north.
Try to plant my feet but blow back and forth.

I just want to lay down.

When did I change? Happened overnight.
Walls block the sun, don’t let in the light.
Cynical and cold. Lord what am I?
With this heart made of stone and eyes that don’t cry.
Five o’clock news stole my hope from me.
Imagine that. . .robbed by TV.

For the first time in my life, moments open themselves up to me and give me rest. They allow me to slip inside them and find peace in my body and my mind. My whole self seems to align. It is a foreshadowing; it is a promise of what is to come. Within these moments, life is no longer counterfeit and I am no longer a fraud. After decades of being your view of “good”, “nice” and “right, I finally understand the weight of what other people think is too heavy for me to bear. More importantly, it is not my load to carry, not my burden to wear.
That is not to say I am a constant resident of the place of peace found only when completely owning myself. No one has flipped a light switch and changed me overnight. My need to people please still rises up to strangle my voice. I am still baited by ego; in some areas it happens a lot, in some areas I am quicker to recognize the lesson without the bumps and bruises to teach the lesson.

As it turns out, life is a marvelous teacher and I am learning every day. Every day, I am a little more confident and secure with my own voice. I am now quicker to ask forgiveness and I am quicker to forgive. I am more able to measure myself based on who I know I am versus who you say I should be. It is easier for me to recognize when I am with “my tribe” or if I am surrounded by “some people”. It is now easier for me to release what was designed to last a season and never meant to be permanent. Not easy, but it is easier. I think it is called, “growing up.”

There are big lessons, I am learning through this transition. The first is, “if you find yourself trying to ‘fit in’ to your own life… RUN! That’s not your life!” There should be an ease about being in your life. There should be peace inside your skin. There should be rest in the sanctuary of you. If you are trapped inside a being that spends most of its time stiffling what issues from your heart, then you are missing the uniqueness of you. You are missing the power within you. You are discounting the fact that your voice is different on purpose and deserves to be heard. You are telling God it was a mistake to create you just as you are and place you here for such a time as this.

The second thing I have learned is an add-on to the first. “Trust the weight of your own voice.” Stop looking around for the burning bush. You are not Moses and its not coming. God ain’t tryna tell you nothing new! He is telling you the same thing He spoke to you in your mother’s womb – your job is to heal and be healed, to love and be loved and thereby heal the world. I will tell you what God IS tryna do. He’s tryna make your hard headed self listen! Not in the frustrated way we handle each other when we are not being heard, but in the patient, loving, “I want what’s best for you,” way that we all do to our own babies.

Every moment of every day, the power of God speaks to you to say, “Expect more and I will do it. Ask for more and I will provide it. Know that you deserve the best and I promise it will be given.” We expect to see miracles yet look in the mirror each and every single day, and miss the closest one.

Unabridged senses give language to thought, and then retreat as quickly as they began. What cowardly ally is prose if it abandons one to sift the cloudiness of the soul alone? What balm is word spoken from eager lips if mistook by the hungry ear? What shelter is the cloak of language if meaning is lost between perception and intent?

What is now perceived is no longer my own; it is not the fruit that issued forth from me. A master of words who cannot master. A creator of visions who has gone blind. An orator of legends who has fallen mute.

Is this what is to become of us? Is our fate to have our left story untold? Will we be marked not by what we said, but what we did not? Shall our legacy be what we do not have the courage to utter? Will our heritage be what we could not find the compassion to hear? Are we stagnant at the ruins of Babel, forever lamenting when we speak but are not understood?

Shall the conviction of your “rightness” and certainty of my “wrongness” be the only inheritance that remains? Does a tree make a sound when it falls in the forest yet no one is there to see? Better still, when it falls, do you care enough to witness or need you only concern yourselves with what you can easily see?

We are separated only by a single breath and understanding. Does that matter to you in the least?